Many years ago I got a Wacom Intuos 5 graphic tablet as a present from my husband. I have used it to practice digital art and have been loving it.
Unfortunately because of random events throughout the years, I have never really practiced as much as I would have wanted to. My skills are still at a beginner level but that is about to change!
Introducing Redbubble!
I was searching a bit here and there on DuckDuckGo (a search engine that respects your privacy, opposite Google), looking at ways to bring my art out to the world.
As my dear husband keeps reminding me (and many others for that matter…) it is nearly impossible to make a living on your art alone. So instead of setting that as a big goal, I decided to start small.
During my search I came across a site called Redbubble which makes it possible for artists to sell their art as prints on various items of their own choosing. Of course it is a limited selection but there is still enough to choose from to satisfy the majority of artists.
Redbubble is a place which handles (almost) everything for you. All you have to do is provide the art, upload it to your (free) Redbubble profile, choose which items you want the art to be available on for purchase and done.
Your earnings depend on you. Redbubble has a specific price set for each kind of item, then you decide how much higher the price should be. That will be your earning then. It isn’t much, if you want to keep it at a reasonable price.
You can of course crank up that price and make big bucks if you sell the item. Keyword here being “if“. Because the higher you put it, the less attractive it gets for buyers to ..well… buy. Remember, you are competing against thousands of other artists for customer attention.
The majority has already got a good following and reputation. And if you decide to browse around, you will see that many of these artists are creating art of superb quality.
Give up or give it a try?
Now you might be wondering, why on earth would someone like me even consider trying my luck there when the competition is so strong and chances of any kind of success so small.
Well, I will tell you why: If I didn’t try, how would I ever increase my chance of success? How would I ever get better? And as I mentioned before, it is free! And I am a sucker for free stuff! Best of all, I think I forgot to mention, is that it is even free to upload your art and put it on for sale as well! So what could I loose from trying this? My confidence will probably take a dive once in a while, when the sales remain at 0 and no one notices me. But I will do my best to not focus on numbers but instead improve my skill at creating art. Try to find the true me in the lines and brush strokes.
This is a challenge that I am finally ready to take on!